5 ms·

A lot of technology is pretty flaky. I think you have a couple of issues however: 1. You have sucky Internet. Bad Internet is going to cause numerous issues. F

by new299 10y ago

A lot of technology is pretty flaky. I think you have a couple of issues however: 1. You have sucky Internet. Bad Internet is going to cause numerous issues. From what I've heard it's hard to get a really good Internet connection in the US. But in many places in the world, great Internet connections are available at low cost. Bad Internet means devices are going to have issues with firmware updates. Things will be more flaky in general, data will be lost part way through transfer and you'll hit issues with devices not robust to this more often. 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works.

microcolonel 10y ago
I've had considerable problems between MacBook Pros and Airport Extremes in both noisy and extremely radio-quiet locations. I'm not shocked if somebody drops $3,000+ on a MBP, and can't reliably connect to an AP from the same vendor, let alone any other vendor.
- ianlevesque 10y ago
  Not a panacea but for me using exclusively 5 GHz fixed wifi once and for all.
  - manarth 10y ago
    To offer a contradictory piece of anecdata, I had to disable 5GHz to maintain a consistent wifi connection.
    - ianlevesque 10y ago
      Isn't technology fun?
- realstuff 10y ago
  Why you're not shocked?
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    Because he had "considerable problems" with his Apple products? Basically Apple release unfinished product and let users test it - and it shows in the software quality. (Don't even ask about the quality of any of their "1.0" products - full of bugs every time, newest example is the touch bar.)
- jsz0 10y ago
  That's quite unusual in my experience. Even most low end / lost cost routers are pretty damn reliable these days. In an office complex with more than a dozen competing networks I use wifi 8 hours a day and rarely have a blip. Have you by any chance being moving one of the same wifi devices between all the different places you've had problems? Another thing, which wouldn't explain all the different locations, is a problem with your electrical wiring / loading. For example I used to have a Dell ethernet switch that would reliably reboot itself whenever other devices it shared a power strip with were under a heavy load. I could actually force reboot it by starting a dd between the right combination of disks in a server. I guess that does technically qualify as out of band management.
  - thaumaturgy 10y ago
    fwiw, I own/sort-of-run an MSP/break-fix shop, and we see a lot of this sort of thing. People only ever call us when something's busted, so it distorts our perception of the reliability of technology, but we literally spend all day, every day troubleshooting technical issues. For routers specifically, people are going to have a wide range of experiences depending on the brand (and sometimes model) they purchased. They all have their own quirks. D-Link tends to experience intermittent packet loss, Netgear has sudden intermittent loss of radio signal, ASUS routers just simply stop routing packets every few weeks or so. For off-the-shelf, we tend to see the fewest complaints from Linksys wireless devices, but their wired devices are pretty unreliable. Engenius, which you'll see in a lot of commercial deployments, are over-priced and the radios in them just give up and go home after about a year or so. This is one of my favorite soapboxes, so I gotta be careful not to get carried away, but I really sympathize with the GP upthread. Mail software, iOS, MacOS, Windows of course, networking, printers, phone systems, camera systems, databases, the whole kit & kaboodle is full of infuriating behavior and it keeps getting harder and harder to diagnose, since nobody believes in ugly things like log files or serviceable hardware anymore. I'm currently in the process of selling my break-fix business, because it's an infinite suck-hole that's stupidly difficult to make money on, and moving full-time to software development where I can at least close a bug report once in a while.
    - jyrkesh 10y ago
- pawadu 10y ago
  my co-worker has an apple wireless keyboard at work (BYOD). if he moves it more than two inches it will disconnect from his MBP (also BYOD). _very_ annoying when I need to type something for him... I personally think someone has put an apple-curse on him, he blames it on cheap batteries.
croon 10y ago
> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now, on Merlins firmware (slightly altered stock). I want to say it's great, but really it's just the least sucky router [0] I've had. Wifi has never mostly worked. At least I've never experienced it. With a wifi dongle on my desktop PC I could go for a few weeks without issue, but I often find at least one (random) phone to be disconnecting at times when I'm trying to access something locally on my network. I never have to reboot the router at least, but have to manually reconnect devices when issues occur, and of course it breaks any connections I had. I installed a wired network in our house just this week, for the devices I care about the most. I have never been on or even heard of a wifi network that always works. I imagine that any such suggestion is a statement of minimizing the time when it fails, which is great, but it has never been on par with wired in reliability. I would be very happy if it did, but I won't hold my breath. [0] Nitpick: We're talking about the AP part of the router, the router part is quite stable and I've had no wired issues.
- therein 10y ago
  I have the same router with the same firmware. I'm using a mid-2014 MBP Retina and my Echo Dot works great along with all my wireless devices both in 2.4G and 5G. My setup is basically Internet -> pfSense -> RT-AC87U with Webpass. Over 5G, I get 250+ mbit.
  - croon 10y ago
    Oh, yes, the wireless performance I get is great, it's the reliability I take issue with. You never get any disconnects or hickups?
    - nicolas_t 10y ago
      I have the exact same router (with Merlins firmware) and never get any disconnects and I have a lot of devices (mbp, macbook air, macbook, iphones, android tablet and ipad). Do you live in an area with a lot of RF noise? or with a lot of other Wifi networks? I've stayed for a month in New York last year at a place with a lot of other wifi networks and my Macbooks became much more flaky when connecting to wifi. Maybe you can try changing the wifi channel? But I can say that having an internet connection that's not great definitely creates a lot of problem and additional frustration. I was way more frustrated when I stayed that month in New York (for some reason the internet connection had intermittent packet loss), I'm really quite surprised at how bad internet connections are in the US.
stonecodegump 10y ago
My macbook disconnects from wifi once per day, quite consistently. I'm just used to it now, and reconnect and within a minute or so I am good to go again.
- twothamendment 10y ago
  Things like that are why I wired network to all the important places - like my desk. I work from home. I don't want to think about wifi issues. I think I'd have to spend quite a bit to get wifi that was as solid as being on the wire - and that just isn't worth it to me. I never trust wifi to work, but that said I do have an Echo on each floor of my house and they are wifi only. Once in a while I notice they are spinning blue while they reconnect, but I don't know the last time that it didn't work when I tried to use it.
lostboys67 10y ago
Its probably that the OP has wifi problems possibly very crowded spectrum or they haven't got wifi set up properly and apple is known for being a bit hit and miss with wifi.
wyldfire 10y ago
I love solving problems like this at work. I hate solving problems like this at home. Part of the challenge is that I don't have the same resources, though. > Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? I hate this X-factor of WiFi with a passion. It's something that legitimately can vary in the time domain, either periodic or aperiodic. I have no good way to rule it out. I have started using home powerline adapters and found them to be effective and reliable high throughput, low-latency connections to the smart TV/set top devices in my home.
yeukhon 10y ago
I recommend if you have a choice get yourself your own modem. Switching to my own Motorola SB6141 was the best investment besides getting a decent router. Just a thought.

by new299 10y ago

microcolonel 10y ago

I've had considerable problems between MacBook Pros and Airport Extremes in both noisy and extremely radio-quiet locations. I'm not shocked if somebody drops $3,000+ on a MBP, and can't reliably connect to an AP from the same vendor, let alone any other vendor.

ianlevesque 10y ago
Not a panacea but for me using exclusively 5 GHz fixed wifi once and for all.
- manarth 10y ago
  To offer a contradictory piece of anecdata, I had to disable 5GHz to maintain a consistent wifi connection.
  - ianlevesque 10y ago
    Isn't technology fun?
realstuff 10y ago
Why you're not shocked?
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  Because he had "considerable problems" with his Apple products? Basically Apple release unfinished product and let users test it - and it shows in the software quality. (Don't even ask about the quality of any of their "1.0" products - full of bugs every time, newest example is the touch bar.)
jsz0 10y ago
That's quite unusual in my experience. Even most low end / lost cost routers are pretty damn reliable these days. In an office complex with more than a dozen competing networks I use wifi 8 hours a day and rarely have a blip. Have you by any chance being moving one of the same wifi devices between all the different places you've had problems? Another thing, which wouldn't explain all the different locations, is a problem with your electrical wiring / loading. For example I used to have a Dell ethernet switch that would reliably reboot itself whenever other devices it shared a power strip with were under a heavy load. I could actually force reboot it by starting a dd between the right combination of disks in a server. I guess that does technically qualify as out of band management.
- thaumaturgy 10y ago
  fwiw, I own/sort-of-run an MSP/break-fix shop, and we see a lot of this sort of thing. People only ever call us when something's busted, so it distorts our perception of the reliability of technology, but we literally spend all day, every day troubleshooting technical issues. For routers specifically, people are going to have a wide range of experiences depending on the brand (and sometimes model) they purchased. They all have their own quirks. D-Link tends to experience intermittent packet loss, Netgear has sudden intermittent loss of radio signal, ASUS routers just simply stop routing packets every few weeks or so. For off-the-shelf, we tend to see the fewest complaints from Linksys wireless devices, but their wired devices are pretty unreliable. Engenius, which you'll see in a lot of commercial deployments, are over-priced and the radios in them just give up and go home after about a year or so. This is one of my favorite soapboxes, so I gotta be careful not to get carried away, but I really sympathize with the GP upthread. Mail software, iOS, MacOS, Windows of course, networking, printers, phone systems, camera systems, databases, the whole kit & kaboodle is full of infuriating behavior and it keeps getting harder and harder to diagnose, since nobody believes in ugly things like log files or serviceable hardware anymore. I'm currently in the process of selling my break-fix business, because it's an infinite suck-hole that's stupidly difficult to make money on, and moving full-time to software development where I can at least close a bug report once in a while.
  - jyrkesh 10y ago
pawadu 10y ago
my co-worker has an apple wireless keyboard at work (BYOD). if he moves it more than two inches it will disconnect from his MBP (also BYOD). _very_ annoying when I need to type something for him... I personally think someone has put an apple-curse on him, he blames it on cheap batteries.

croon 10y ago

> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now, on Merlins firmware (slightly altered stock). I want to say it's great, but really it's just the least sucky router [0] I've had. Wifi has never mostly worked. At least I've never experienced it. With a wifi dongle on my desktop PC I could go for a few weeks without issue, but I often find at least one (random) phone to be disconnecting at times when I'm trying to access something locally on my network. I never have to reboot the router at least, but have to manually reconnect devices when issues occur, and of course it breaks any connections I had. I installed a wired network in our house just this week, for the devices I care about the most. I have never been on or even heard of a wifi network that always works. I imagine that any such suggestion is a statement of minimizing the time when it fails, which is great, but it has never been on par with wired in reliability. I would be very happy if it did, but I won't hold my breath. [0] Nitpick: We're talking about the AP part of the router, the router part is quite stable and I've had no wired issues.

therein 10y ago
I have the same router with the same firmware. I'm using a mid-2014 MBP Retina and my Echo Dot works great along with all my wireless devices both in 2.4G and 5G. My setup is basically Internet -> pfSense -> RT-AC87U with Webpass. Over 5G, I get 250+ mbit.
- croon 10y ago
  Oh, yes, the wireless performance I get is great, it's the reliability I take issue with. You never get any disconnects or hickups?
  - nicolas_t 10y ago
    I have the exact same router (with Merlins firmware) and never get any disconnects and I have a lot of devices (mbp, macbook air, macbook, iphones, android tablet and ipad). Do you live in an area with a lot of RF noise? or with a lot of other Wifi networks? I've stayed for a month in New York last year at a place with a lot of other wifi networks and my Macbooks became much more flaky when connecting to wifi. Maybe you can try changing the wifi channel? But I can say that having an internet connection that's not great definitely creates a lot of problem and additional frustration. I was way more frustrated when I stayed that month in New York (for some reason the internet connection had intermittent packet loss), I'm really quite surprised at how bad internet connections are in the US.

stonecodegump 10y ago

My macbook disconnects from wifi once per day, quite consistently. I'm just used to it now, and reconnect and within a minute or so I am good to go again.

twothamendment 10y ago
Things like that are why I wired network to all the important places - like my desk. I work from home. I don't want to think about wifi issues. I think I'd have to spend quite a bit to get wifi that was as solid as being on the wire - and that just isn't worth it to me. I never trust wifi to work, but that said I do have an Echo on each floor of my house and they are wifi only. Once in a while I notice they are spinning blue while they reconnect, but I don't know the last time that it didn't work when I tried to use it.

lostboys67 10y ago

Its probably that the OP has wifi problems possibly very crowded spectrum or they haven't got wifi set up properly and apple is known for being a bit hit and miss with wifi.

wyldfire 10y ago

I love solving problems like this at work. I hate solving problems like this at home. Part of the challenge is that I don't have the same resources, though. > Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? I hate this X-factor of WiFi with a passion. It's something that legitimately can vary in the time domain, either periodic or aperiodic. I have no good way to rule it out. I have started using home powerline adapters and found them to be effective and reliable high throughput, low-latency connections to the smart TV/set top devices in my home.

yeukhon 10y ago

I recommend if you have a choice get yourself your own modem. Switching to my own Motorola SB6141 was the best investment besides getting a decent router. Just a thought.